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I'm trying to incorporate colour into my life. Until recently, everything in my closet was black, white, grey, navy or olive.

I was a total floral hippie as a child so when I finally could make my own choices, I've been living in different black suit jackets and been really drawn to masculine clothes.

My first day of high school, I wore brown boys' corduroys that my mom had sewn Sesame Street elastic into - they were my coolest pants - and a lime green Patagonia fleece that my mom found at Goodwill. I loved fleece.

When I was fourteen, I was one of those kids who wore all black because it matched everything. Seriously.

The clothes that fire up my emotions are colorful and 'different' pieces. My eye still picks out gilded-cloque glamour from among Burberry's streamlined trench coats or a hand-printed coat from Dries Van Noten.

Fashion for my mother was about asserting and demonstrating you had aesthetics, tastes, sensibility, manners, beauty - qualities that black people were always trying to prove they possessed, because it was often assumed that we didn't.

My essentials are skinny jeans, loose-fitting tees, big jumpers, and the leather jacket. Everything is black or blue - I don't own anything colorful.

I was a very rotund child with short hair, and for some reason, I always had black ballet shoes. I was like the Wednesday Addams of ballet.

As a little girl in the '50s, I couldn't wear a purple-and-white flowered skirt with a red blouse - those colors were too loud. My parents were not into that 'We are Negros that wear all beige,' but there was a line you could walk over that could signal vulgar, crass, rather than clever use of color. And that outfit crossed over the line.